Devil Bones Read Online Free PDF

something that can lift a cauldron of dirt.”
    Head wagging, Slidel began punching his mobile.
    Four hours later, I was pouring myself into my Mazda. Greenleaf was bathed in moonlight. I was bathed in sweat.
    Emerging from the house, Slidel had spotted a woman shooting with a smal digital camera through a kitchen window. After dispatching her, he’d chain-smoked two Camels, mumbled something about deeds and tax records, and gunned off in his Taurus.
    The CSS techs had left in their truck. They’d deliver the dols, statues, beads, tools, and other artifacts to the crime lab.
    The morgue van had also come and gone. Joe Hawkins, the MCME death investigator on cal that night, was transporting the skuls and chicken to the ME facility. Ditto the cauldrons. Though Larabee would be less than enthused about the mess, I preferred sifting the fil under controled conditions.
    As anticipated, the large cauldron had posed the greatest difficulty. Weighing approximately the same as the Statue of Liberty, its removal had required winching, a lot of muscle, and a lexicon of colorful words.
    I puled out and drove up Greenleaf. Ahead, Frazier Park was a black cutout in the urban landscape. A jungle gym rose from the shadows, a silvery cubist sculpture poised over the dark, serpentine smile of the Irwin Creek guley.
    Doubling back down Westbrook to Cedar, I skirted the edge of uptown and drove southeast toward my home turf, Myers Park. Built in the 1930s as Charlotte’s first streetcar burb, today the sector is overpriced, oversmug, and over-Republican. Though not particularly old, the hood is elegant and wel-landscaped, Charlotte’s answer to Cleveland’s Shaker Heights and Miami’s Coral Gables. What the hel, we’re not Charleston.
    Ten minutes after leaving Third Ward I was parked beside my patio. Locking the car, I headed into my townhouse.
    Which requires some explanation.
    I live on the grounds of Sharon Hal, a nineteenth-century manor-turned-condo-complex lying just off the Queens University campus. My little outbuilding is caled the
    “Annex.” Annex to what? No one knows. The tiny two-story structure appears on none of the estate’s original plans. The hal is there. The coach house. The herb and formal gardens. No annex. Clearly an afterthought.
    Speculation by friends, family, and guests ranges from smokehouse to hothouse to kiln. I am not fixated on identifying the original builder’s purpose. Barely twelve hundred square feet, the structure suits my needs. Bedroom and bath up. Kitchen, dining room, parlor, and study down. I took occupancy when my marriage to Pete imploded. A decade later, it stil serves.
    “Yo, Bird,” I caled out to the empty kitchen.
    No cat.
    “Birdie, I’m home.”
    The hum of the refrigerator. A series of soft bongs from Gran’s mantel clock.
    I counted. Eleven.
    My eyes snuck to the message indicator on my phone. Not a flicker.
    Depositing my purse, I went straight to the shower.
    As I exorcised celar grime and odor with green tea body gel, rosemary mint shampoo, and water as hot as my skin could stand, my thoughts drifted to the perversely dark voice mail light, to the voice I was hoping to hear.
    Bonjour, Tempe. I miss you. We should talk.
    Pop-up image. Lanky build, sandy hair, Carolina blue eyes. Andrew Ryan, lieutenant-détective, Section des crimes contre la personne, Sûreté du Québec.
    So there’s the Quebec thing. I work two jobs, one in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA, one in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, where I am forensic anthropologist for the Bureau du coroner. Ryan is a homicide detective with the provincial police. In other words, for murders in La Belle Province, I work the vics and Ryan detects.
    Years back, when I began at the Montreal lab, Ryan had a reputation as the station-house stud. And I had a rule against office romance. Turned out the lieutenant-détective was lousy with rules. When hopes of salvaging my marriage finaly hit the scrap heap, we began seeing each other